The Wonders of Prebiotics

[godlovesatrier]

Just thought I'd add my own experience here.

I've not long ordered my second microbiome test or 16s from biomesight and Ken's website microbiomeprescriotion.com gives you insights into your biome data. He's recently redesigned it and added biomesight data study's. These are bacterial data from patient self reporting symptoms. But there are thousands of them which reduces statistical errors and deviation.

So there are three things I want to do:
1. Reduce PEM
2. Reduce brainfog
3. Reduce general symptoms of cfs

Ken has data for all these. So the website will take your 16s sample and then based on your bacteria populations make recommendations.

For PEM my bifido bacteria are probably 5% of what they should be and my lactobacillus are about 2% of what they should be. Not remotely uncommon findings in ME.

Two of the top recommendations for the above are inulin which has lots of studies showing it helps the above populations and FOS which has some contradictions potentially but still works pretty well.

I started these three days ago and experienced mega flatulence (although not of the dead smelly kind) and a constant thunderstorm in my small intestine (without diherrea or any of those issues). So they seem to be working! Just as Hip said they would. I started with 15g FOS and 1 TSP inulin but need to increase the inulin. I'm taking it once a day but probably need to spread it out a bit...although it works all day long seemingly based on the thunderstorm lol so not sure that's a requirement.

I'm hoping this will re-populate the very stagnant populations of lacto and bifido.

Also the bacillus subtilis probiotic hip recommended actually helps to increase these two populations which is interesting.

 

[godlovesatrier]

Continuing to see excellent improvement on the prebiotics. In fact I have only take them twice in the last week and yet I am retaininig most of the good effects.

1. Able to wake up every morning without feeling even mild PEM like I was before.
2. Physical fatigue in muscles the day after doing something is negible to low.
3. It's certainly helped boost my energy envelope. I went on holiday last week, took all sorts of PEM buffers but I am convinced (as I have taken all the other buffers previously) that the prebiotic (primarily inulin at 15g a day) was paramount in keeping me going. I had 4 days!! In a row where I did a lot before I crashed. Which is 100% a record for me. I did overdo it a bit after that but to be honest it wasn't until I had a very busy day and decide dto go for a 50 minute walk along the coast with my fiance that things went a bit south. The day after that I felt much worse. I've almost recovered now about a week later after a very nasty virus/cold.
4. Seems to have over wired my immune system - still not sure if this is good or not but I have had a virus so...
5. Did disrupt sleep after a week, so I had to dial the dose down, but smaller doses of 1 teaspoon didn't really help, much lower doses of half and a quarter teaspoon of FOS or inulin did help a lot. I should say this applies to me being home. When I was on holiday my sleep was fine due to the fact I was so busy in the day doing more than I would normally do.

Since I got back sleep has been a bit off and on. When I take the prebiotic in the morning tho I feel amazing. To be honest I felt good within just 2 days of taking 15g's FOS or Inulin. It was like a thunderstorm in my stomach for about 2 weeks, then that settled down and disappeared. I can now eat sugar, spicy food and all normal foods again!! Very happy about that after I don't know over 2 years of issues.

I also stopped taking solaray24 months before I did this prebiotic experiment. I was totally reliant on that to keep away abdominal pain.

I got a 16s just before I started the prebiotic and that showed no e.coli, lower lactobacillus populations but slightly higher bifidobacteria. So basically I was in a worse state and biomesight's score told me as much, it was orange, my pre prebiotic score was in the red. So bad! I'd have to get a follow up 16s to see how it looks now, but based on how I feel must be great.

Brainfog did worsen sadly. This really is the main thing stopping me taking it. I am hoping to combine it with an antimicrobial in the hopes this may redress the balance. We will see.